TechWire

On the road with Meteor BB

In Naas this morning. 1.3Mbs download speed (1Mbs upload speed). Funny -- that's faster than most of the places I've used it in Dublin. Still not the 2Mbs minimum speed promised, though.

I am a grumpy bastard

Do I suffer from Irritable Male Syndrome?

It has not escaped my notice that I have been the world's most acerbic grump in recent months. I'm taking it out on Twitter, in my columns and even on this blog (in posts like this).

Why am I such a grumpy bastard?

Is it because, at 35, I am entering into some sort of middle-aged surliness?

For sure, I have always had difficulty with consensus. From anyone; PR firms, the rest of the media, the blogging community, anyone.

But this doesn't explain why I am such a pain in the arse sometimes.

More video fiddling...

Just got Nokia's 5800 Xpress Music mobile. This is literally me taking it out of the box and switching it on ofr the first time.

Final Meteor mobile broadband roadtest: 0.2Mbs in shopping centre

This is a bit disappointing. I'm sitting in the Santry Omnicentre, about 100 metres from a busy Meteor shop. And the best speed I can get is 0.2Mbs. I'm trying to surf the web but, at this speed, it's very difficult.

Larry Smith, Meteor's CEO, stated that the "minimum speed you would get is 2Mbs". But I've recorded far lower speeds than that in lots of places around Dublin.

(To be fair, I have also seen speeds in excess of 5Mbs.)

I wonder if it's the same in Cork, the other launch city?

How to get lots of web traffic using cheap, dodgy tactics

David Cochrane of Politics.ie owns this one.

Amas's Aileen O'Toole has started a project called Ideas Campaign. Its aim is to stop the country whinging about our troubles and to encourage us to focus our energy on solutions rather than griping.

But, following an appearance on Prime Time by O'Toole last month, a Labour Senator, Alan Kelly, bought the adwords 'Aileen O'Toole' to promote a conference he is running to support his European Parliament election campaign.

O'Toole blogged that this was a little off-side, as did Cochrane.

Aside form the cheek of doing this, his conference and website is a straight rip-off of O'Toole's. Check both and you'll see what I'm talking about.

I suppose one could argue that the more websites and campaigns out there that try to foster new thinking about our problems, the better. But as Cochrane points out, this smacks of opportunism more than genuine altruism.

In fairness to Kelly, he has now withdrawn the 'Aileen O'Toole' adwords.

Ryanair's €135 for a half hour's web surfing

I've been web-surfing for the past half-hour. I checked the laptop's data log -- I've downloaded 9MB in that 30 minutes. This is purely from surfing from site to site: I haven't actually downloaded anything in particular,

It struck me that, if I were doing this on a Ryanair flight (using its new mobile and data service), this would have cost me up to €135. (The airline charges €10 - €15 per megabyte downloaded on its service.)

In all the scams of recent years, is there any rip-off as great as this?

Using Meteor's broadband around town: no "minimum 2Mbs speed"

Am in Starbucks (Dame Street) waiting to interview someone. As usual, wi-fi isn't working here. So I've reverted to Meteor's broadband stick.

To be honest, the speed here is a bit disappointing (0.5Mbs) for a service that is supposed to have a top speed of 7.2Mbs, and which is supposed to have a minimum speed of 2Mbs (according to Meteor CEO, Larry Smith).

In my office in Harcourt Street, it's as low as 0.3Mbs (although it has reached 2.5Mbs at times). In fact the only place in the city centre where I've seen it higher than 3Mbs was on St Stephens Green, where it hit 5Mbs consistently.

Am a bit disappointed, so far.

Should mash-ups be exempt from copyright law?

Britain has come out with a position that they should not. I wonder what the Irish government's position is? Odds on that it will follow Britain's, in my view.

The issue is covered by Out-Law.com:

The [British] Government has responded to a consultation paper published by the European Commission on copyright reform. That consultation asks whether the European Union's Copyright Directive should be amended to introduce exemptions for 'user-created content'. User-created content can include individuals' use of professionally-produced music, film, video or images for a new or different purpose to the original.

The [British] Government rejected proposed changes that would exempt such users of copyrighted material from restrictions in copyright law.

"The suggestion for an exemption for user-created content seems to create a distinction between those who use and those who create works, which in many cases is not justified," said the [British] Government's response to the Commission's consultation.

"Another significant concern is the extent to which such an exemption might allow others to use the works in a way that the existing rights holders do not approve of and the impact that exemptions in this area might have on remuneration," it said.

Just messing about here...

Quick bit of play before work resumes. This was taken on Samsung's Pixon (8MP).

A Friday lunchtime desk in the SBP

Comparing speeds between three of the mobile broadband products: Meteor, Vodafone and 3. (My O2 credit ran out about a month ago.)

Twitter land rush

Just like the dot com (and farcical dot eu) name registration panic of years ago, I think that there is now set to be a similar land rush, albeit on a much smaller scale, for Twitter usernames.

Last week, 'ryantubridy' entered the Irish Twitterverse, but has been called out as a fake (it's not certain whether or not it is a fake). Recently, George Hook fell victim to the same prank (ironically, it encouraged him to get onto the service and start using it and he has amassed about 1,700 followers in three weeks).

The reason that it is so easy to grab a celebrity or business name on Twitter is that hardly anyone in Ireland is on it. (I'd guess it is still under 30,000 people.)

But when papers like the Independent keep running full page stories on the 'disappearance' of Kenny Egan (twitter.com/kennyegan) and keep quoting his Twitter updates, you know that it's going to attract a lot more attention.

Watch out, too, for tabloids (and especially the Irish Daily Mail) mining Twitter for small pieces of gossip out of the mouths of minor celebrities (eg George Hook saying yesterday that his wife was "the best thing that has ever happened to me" (yep, you'll find that on his stream, Mail lurker, so go for it)).

(The photo, from Joe, is taken from a Young Fine Gael conference, 2007.)

Boards.ie 3G broadband triallists only use 1.8GB of data a month

According to Meteor, the average data usage per month by over 400 triallists on its new 3G broadband service is 1.8GB. That includes a large amount (according to Meteor) of members of Boards.ie, the community web forum that has almost 8,000 users per day.

This surprised me a little, as I think that 5GB may be a bit too pinchy on the data side for an otherwise competitive mobile broadband offering. But maybe Boards users aren't quite as data-hungry as might have been thought.

Anyway, here are the other salient details from today's Meteor launch.

It'll cost €17 per month (plus €30 up front for the dongle) for a 12 month contract, or €20 for a '30 day pass' (capped at 5GB) plus €80 up front for the dongle. There'll also be a one-day pass on offer for €3 (capped at 0.5GB).

Further details:

-- Speeds will be a minimum of 2Mbs and a maximum of 7.2Mbs for the time being. But sometime later this year, when Huawei releases updated dongles, the maximum will jump to 14.4Mbs.
-- Coverage starts in Cork and Dublin, as of today. Five more cities will be by the end of this year. 'Nationwide coverage' will happen sometime next year.
-- 'Nationwide' means "over 95 per cent" of the country's population. Larry Smith, the CEO, said that "everywhere you can get a Meteor 2G signal now will be covered by our mobile broadband". Okay, but Meteor roams with Vodafone in some far-flung places, doesn't it? Yes, said another Meteor executive, but it's actually a tiny proportion (less than five per cent) now. So it will be nationwide covergae on Meteor's own network.
-- Roaming will happen using Meteor's current roaming partners. The company will offer a one-size-fits-all 'pass' product for roaming in Britain. However, Meteor executives acknowledge that not all of Meteor's roaming partners will facilitate 3G roaming. There were no more specifics on that.
-- Meteor will observe Eircom's deal with Irma and the music industry on site-blocking and Eircom's three-strikes rule.
-- The data cap will be 5GB per month.

Is Harvey Norman on the brink?

The company is losing money in Ireland, big time. (In fairness, other companies are, too.) At least one major retail chain will leave Ireland by the summertime.

Online video editing programs

I'm going to do a review of the best online video editing programs. Right now, I'm tinkering with Jaycut and, while it looks good, there are significant drawbacks over using, say, Apple's iMovie. But there are other systems out there, so I'll be looking at them soon.

Starbucks Irl sets a world record for lateness in auto-reply emails

A full two weeks ago, I shot off an email with a few queries about Starbucks to its customer care email address. It only took 16 days for the company to send back the following automated email reply:

02 March 2009

Dear Mr Weckler

Thank you for contacting Starbucks Coffee Company. We apologise for the delay in responding to your email regarding our Dublin Dame street store.

We welcome feedback from our customers and please be assured we will respond to you shortly.  A member of the customer care team will respond to your email personally in due course.

I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with us.

Yours sincerely...

This has to be a record of some sort?